Wider Angle: Links for 10.31.06

I will be in Cincinnati for a few days so posts to Wider Angle will be few, if any. Maybe I'll stop by Corinthian.

A lot of Huffington Post readers really don't find Borat funny, which is really funny. "Borat is a racist PIG. It is ironic for a jewish person to make up lies about other people. What if the shoe was on the other foot, he would be screaming anti semitsim"

An internal ABC memo was leaked that lists over 100 advertisers that requested to be blacked out on Air America affiliates. Here's a big JPEG of the memo.

Thanks to the war with Lebanon, marijuana prices in Israel have jumped 800 percent due to importing restrictions meant to limit illegal weapons trade. Ironic, no?

George "Macacawitz" Allen's staffers beat up a student for asking Allen a question about his sealed divorce papers and arrest record, which are in the public domain. Mike Stark's letter to the NBC affiliate that shot video of the altercation explaining why he asked "why did you spit on your first wife?"

Interesting super secret details about the GooTube deal on Marc Cuban's blog. "Armed with this kitty of money Youtube approached the media companies with an open checkbook to buy peace... They negotiated about 50 million for each major media company to be paid from the Google buyout monies." [via waxy]

The great Mike Malloy began his new 3-hour show on Nova M Radio, the new Liberal radio network from the original founders of Air America, based in Phoenix. His show is on live 9pm-midnight Pacific (that's midnight-3am Eastern) and can be streamed (MP3) from the site -- podcasts and downloads are coming soon.

Wired bought reddit.

The U.S. government is spending $50 million on abstinence education for 20- to 29-year-olds. And why not throw more taxpayer money away, really?

Here's a good reason to keep your information to yourself whenever possible. "No, no. You’re not listening to me. That wasn’t me. I’m not even in Utah. I’m in Oregon. I have no affiliation with your university. I don’t even drive a Toyota." [via reddit]

Post no bills: blatant reckless abandon of the rules.

The national debt plotted on a graph with an overlay of who was President of United States and America at the time is staggering and wholly unsurprising.

Why are there flat screens in almost every restaurant and store? They were cool a while ago, but now they're distracting... like regular TV. "Thousands of TV’s that were brought in to satisfy the World Cup pan epidemic, stayed put... Once these sets were “temporarily” installed for the Cup they never left."

Scott Adams on electronic voting machines: "Now don’t get me wrong – there’s a 100% chance that the voting machines will get hacked and all future elections will be rigged. But that doesn’t mean we’ll get a worse government. It probably means that the choice of the next American president will be taken out of the hands of deep-pocket, autofellating, corporate shitbags and put it into the hands of some teenager in Finland. How is that not an improvement?"

Society clubs in India are working very hard to keep their traditions and customs unaltered by new culture. "A fierce notice in the white colonnaded entrance warns that 'bush' shirts are prohibited, adding cryptically: 'Unlike the shirt, the design of the upper portion of the bush shirt is like that of a safari.' Another rule states, 'Servants and drivers will not be allowed to have food.'"